By Rachel Lippmann, St. Louis Public Radio
St. Louis, MO – Four people are dead and five more were injured, after an early-morning shooting Thursday at an electrical equipment manufacturing facility in north St. Louis.
Police were called to the ABB Incorporated factory at 4350 Semple Ave. around 6:30 a.m. Thursday after they received reports of multiple shots fired. Tactical teams quickly found the body of the gunman, widely named as 51-year-old Timothy Hendron, an employee at the factory.
"We're working with the managers and representatives of ABB to piece together the puzzles of what happened today, and certainly we'll be doing quite a few interviews,"Police Chief Dan Isom said
Officers from the St. Louis city and county police departments, as well as the Missouri State Highway Patrol and the FBI responded to the shooting. The building was surrounded within minutes of the first call, Isom said.
"We really worked well to get the building cleared, get the victims out who were injured and to secure the area, and we really believe that the initial response of the officers probably insured that there weren't more victims who were hurt," he said.
Police recovered what Isom described as an assault rifle, plus a shotgun and a handgun, and department tactical teams went room by room through the complex, searching for additional victims and any other weapons or explosives Hendron might have had left behind. The sweep did not turn up anything else. Isom did not know if the weapons were registered. He said he had heard, but could not confirm, reports that other employees may have been carrying concealed weapons and shot Hendron.
Isom would not speculate on a motive for the shooting, but said family members had no indication Hendron was planning an attack. Hendron was a plaintiff in a class action lawsuit over losses suffered by ABB's pension plan. The case is currently in front of a federal judge in Kansas City.
An employee at the company's engineering offices, Brian Nelson, told St. Louis Public Radio that Hendron worked on the company's assembly line, installing the tanks on medium-voltage transmitters. Nelson said he shadowed Hendron for a few days to learn about the company's products, and never heard him complain about his job.